So it is kinda odd he'd have Cordy doing all this stuff knowing fans would associate it with her even if it's later revealed it wasn't really.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if that was personal feeling cropping up there when it come to how willing they were to protect the character, even before Charisma's pregnancy the Ats writers had a plan for Cordelia to return as the big bad for season 4, I believe that it was all meant to lead up to an epic battle where Angel was forced to kill Cordelia. Charisma's pregnancy meant that had to rewrite much of the season and make it so that Cordelia was instead a vessel for Jasmine, but either way it was never the plan for the Cordelia that audiences knew to return for season 4, it was always going to be the story of her downfall. Fan lore has just made it so that Joss turned around and fired an actress after she got pregnant and messed up his masterplan, but I suspect that it was all a lot more complicated than that, there were definitely rumours of the WB not being too happy with Charisma even before her pregnancy.
And budget issues likely did play a part as well, David Fury has talked about how much they were struggling with the budget cuts in season 5 in comparison to season 4 letting them have things like a rain of fire. The second-billed actress in the credits wasn't going to come cheap, and both Charisma and James would already have been making a nice chunk of change from their Bts contracts before they renegotiated to continue playing their characters on Ats, so they would both most likely have been making waaay more than the actors for Wesley, Fred, and Gunn
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Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if that was personal feeling cropping up there when it come to how willing they were to protect the character, even before Charisma's pregnancy the Ats writers had a plan for Cordelia to return as the big bad for season 4, I believe that it was all meant to lead up to an epic battle where Angel was forced to kill Cordelia. Charisma's pregnancy meant that had to rewrite much of the season and make it so that Cordelia was instead a vessel for Jasmine, but either way it was never the plan for the Cordelia that audiences knew to return for season 4, it was always going to be the story of her downfall. Fan lore has just made it so that Joss turned around and fired an actress after she got pregnant and messed up his masterplan, but I suspect that it was all a lot more complicated than that, there were definitely rumours of the WB not being too happy with Charisma even before her pregnancy.
And budget issues likely did play a part as well, David Fury has talked about how much they were struggling with the budget cuts in season 5 in comparison to season 4 letting them have things like a rain of fire. The second-billed actress in the credits wasn't going to come cheap, and both Charisma and James would already have been making a nice chunk of change from their Bts contracts before they renegotiated to continue playing their characters on Ats, so they would both most likely have been making waaay more than the actors for Wesley, Fred, and Gunn